


The Gist of Your Letter

by RosalindBeatrice



Category: The Beatles
Genre: Angst, M/M, Post-Break Up
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-18
Updated: 2018-07-18
Packaged: 2019-06-12 08:38:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15336042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosalindBeatrice/pseuds/RosalindBeatrice
Summary: Paul McCartney'sRamis released on 21 May, 1971.





	The Gist of Your Letter

_Dear Paul,_  
  
_I've just been listening to a record called RAM - maybe you've heard of it? I have to say - it isn't Maestro's finest work. If I'm being honest I prefer the first one._

John leaned back in the chair and looked at what he’d typed. That was true enough. The first time he played it through, it was atrocious. That was before he realised the pitch wasn’t right, fiddled with the knob, and got Paul’s voice back into its proper range again. He’d roared Yoko out of the room when she began offering comments during the second listen. He didn’t know where she was right now and he didn’t care. The music was a bit too soft for his liking, but the words kept him glued to his record player.

With each repetition, he caught a fresh insult in the lyrics, a verbal landmine laid by Paul for his ears alone. “Dear Boy” sliced especially deep. He was as certain that it was directed at him as he was of anything. As usual, Paul had remained just vague enough to plausibly deny his true intent and meaning. If John so much as raised the merest objection to it, he’d look like a raving paranoid. The cracked and seeping wound—festering and healing in turns ever since the first day Paul and the others had abused Yoko in the studio—had opened back up over the course of the afternoon. He wanted to writhe out from under it, but couldn’t. He wanted to look Paul in the eyes and shake him by the shoulders until his teeth rattled, but it was nighttime in Scotland just as it was nighttime in Berkshire. He imagined chartering an overnight plane and showing up on Paul’s doorstep as dawn broke, belting him in the mouth when he answered the door, but it wasn’t physical pain he wanted to inflict on Paul so much as emotional.

A letter sent by courier would do it.

_I suppose you thought you were being terribly clever with the fucking beetles - FUCKING BEATLES GET IT? - on your record sleeve (sleeze) but I can see right thru you and so do George, Ringo, Derek, ET AL a.k.a. everyone other bloody person who knew about me and you._

John wasn’t too worried about how the reviewers might interpret the screwing beetles. Paul’s New Year’s Eve lawsuit provided a simple answer. Sue, screw, sue, screw.

He, however, knew exactly what Paul meant. He couldn’t stop himself blinking back to the night at Cavendish, _that_ night, after the Avedon shoot. The way Paul said, “What if I don’t want to do it?” his face half-hidden in the shadows of the bedroom.

How he had felt when he realised Paul was scared. Like all the light in the Andromeda Galaxy had suddenly poured through him.

_I guess you're happy that we’ve all taken it up the arse now because of you and I’m not just talking about from me to you - as it were and all that jazz._

He couldn’t resist bending over the typewriter and scribbling jizz in parentheses next to the word jazz. God knows there’d been enough of it for those few brief months.

Paul hadn’t wanted to take it so far at first. “What if I hurt you?” he said.

“You’re not gonna hurt me,” John snapped.

Not hurting John was the furthest thing from Paul’s mind now.

_Why don’t you just admit that this lawsuit business of yours is about saving face so we can all walk away with our fair share._

John did think it was rather rich of Paul to pretend that the four of them were equally guilty and that he was just as much a victim as anyone else. That he was above wanting revenge.

He paused to turn on the radio. Paul’s record had been on the shelves less than forty-eight hours, but he still half-expected to hear the chirpy horns from “Admiral Halsey” over the airwaves. It was just Tony Orlando and his daft song about knocking on ceilings, though.

 _There’s enough Apple pie to go around, but perhaps you prefer monkberry flavour or a nice piece of cake. Me I like JAP TART. You might know it as Jap flavour of the month but who’s laughing now?     _     

He would never forget that Paul had a bite-mark on one of his pectorals, a few days old, during the Avedon shoot. Paul had caught him looking at it when they were all romping around shirtless that afternoon for their portraits.

He would never forget the they’ll-never-find-out smile on Paul’s face when their eyes met.

_I did fall in love and you’re right - it’s not half as good as this - it’s 10 TIMES as good as this. You can “eat at home” all you’d like son but you’re not fooling me. Don’t pretend you’re not bent as a nail just cos you got two kids and another on the way. Don’t pretend you’re not as twisted as the rest of us. Don’t pretend you’re with Linda for ANY other reason other than you knocked her up at the right time. ( Wrong time???)_

That would lacerate him.

He’d tuned the Orlando song out, but the distinctive strains of George’s guitar coming from the wireless distracted him. It was Ringo’s first single, which he thought was a nice bit of work. He had to smile at the fact that neither he nor Paul nor George were in the top fifty right now. Ol’ Ringo had managed to beat them all in their pissing contest, peaking at number four like it was nothing.

The sight of the bite-mark had been too much for John. He knew then that he’d never be able to stop himself asking for what he really wanted, and indeed he found himself blurting it out a few hours later when he and Paul were alone, relaxed with marijuana and a few drinks.

Of course everyone figured it out. John thought he might have admitted something to Derek after Paul had put paid to it, when he was pissed as a newt and couldn’t bear to hold his tongue, but more than likely the lot of them just knew.

_Shall I admit it for you Macka? Should I hold a bed-in and tell them all what happened at our bed-in? I could knock you down with a feather and I don’t care if it’s not allowed. What have I got to lose - riddle me that! I’m happy where I’m at and I’m not the one living in the past. I ain’t the one who’s crippled inside._

That’s what hurt almost more than anything: Paul smiling outside the register’s office holding Linda close, white flowers raining down on them, Paul as straight as an arrow in the pages of the magazines with his wholesome ready meal of a family. He couldn’t be more different to his twisted mate with the dirty LP covers and weird Oriental girlfriend whose womb disgorged the child they made their first week together, a horrible omen if ever there was one.

The bruised child’s skin was translucent and its eyes were dark beneath its sealed lids. It reminded John of a newborn mouse.

“He looks like you,” Yoko had said. “He’s got your nose.”

John wanted the dead child out of his sight as much as he never wanted to let it go.

Paul’s first child was born ten months after John laid his in the grave, a chubby-cheeked rebuke to what John knew to be the truth: that under the schoolboy smile and cheerful waves to the press, he was living a lie.

_This is one letter you’ll get the gist of even if I have to deliver it in person and shove it up your arse - PLEASE MISTER POSTMAN. That's what this is all about isn't it? There’s nothing up your arse anymore and you miss it! We all know which way the wind blows but you were always too much of a coward to admit to it. Brian (RIP) and your friend Robert had ten times the balls that you do. Why make it sad to be gay?? The only person doing the screwing now is YOU. _

For all of his rationality, Paul too believed in omens. A change came over him when Brian died. “We can’t do this anymore,” he said, not looking at John as he steered the Mini down the road. This, John understood, was Paul driving John into the sheets with every thrust, Paul smiling into his hair in the mornings, Paul sat in the open window strumming his guitar as he did when he felt happiest. John begged him to reconsider. He tried bullying him into it. He was desperate. He couldn’t give it up now that he’d experienced it. The first time had been a divine revelation. Amidst the pain, there was pleasure so acute it could only have come from God or Krishna. Someone had made it, and what’s more, made it for men alone, men like him and Paul.

_So man up or however you fags like to put it, make your Muzak, but stop holding us down._

He stood up and glanced down at the letter, which didn’t even make one page. Paul had caved to him a couple times in India. The meditation hadn’t intoxicated him in the same way, though. He could take it or leave it, just as he could take or leave John. And leave he did. John drank the meditation deep. It got into his brains and bones, along with the Japanese artist who’d been pestering him for months with cryptic messages. John knew she was poor and just after his patronage, but her tactics were unlike anybody else’s and that intrigued him. He needed a distraction. He needed to get out from under the feeling that his skin was on fire whenever he so much as caught a glimpse of Paul’s dark-haired head against the backdrop of the fog-shrouded Himalayas. It was a bit sick what they had been doing. Or at least that’s what he tried convincing himself.

He sat back down. He still loved Paul. He still hated him. He wanted to punish him. He wanted to ruin him. He slid his fingers over the cool typewriter keys again.

_Love,_

_JohnandYoko_

_P.S. I haven’t made my mind up whether to send this or have it printed in the papers. You’d like a scandal wouldn’t you? It would give you a chance to play the martyr. “I don’t know what he’s on about &c. &c.” _

He reeled the paper out of the typewriter and folded it twice. When it was sealed in its envelope, he wrote Paul’s Scottish address on the outside. He didn’t have to look in the address book. He’d memorised it down to the postcode. In the morning, he’d have their latest gofer take it to the post office and sent it overnight.

The P.S. wasn’t a lie. He’d unstuck a carbon copy from the back of the letter and it would be no trouble to hand it over to a press agent. In fact, he’d come close more than once to letting a remark slip to one of the media, but he’d always pulled back without knowing why. It occurred to him now that it was the hope that Paul was still capable of changing his mind. It wouldn’t do to piss him off too much. Just enough to make him feel something again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to @Savageandwise for playing beta all the way back in December.


End file.
